Overall thoughts on LoT!

Hey all, Vince here.

So LoT is finished. Overall it was a great tourney which I really enjoyed. I hadn't played in a largish tourney like this in a while which made it even better to get 5 great games in against people I couldn't usually play :D I finished with 3 wins against SW, CSM and Eldar, 1 draw against Nids and 1 loss against Eldar which I was mightily proud of my beloved Death Guard, I hadn't thought they'd perform as admirably as they did! I came in 7th overall which was another surprise.

So onto the positives. There are many indeed.

The TOs - both really cool guys, I especially had time to talk to both of them early on Saturday morning and they seemed like cool chaps. Kudos to running such a big tourney and kudos to Marks wife too (2 tourneys in 1 really!) and overall it was a great success. Looking forward to seeing an even better tourney next year and it will be at a new venue which will be a change as the Leagues Club didn't get their lease re-newed...

The armies - Wow! Some unbelievably cool armies there. I'm still sifting through my photos to weed out the dodgy photography but I will post them soon enough! I should add here that I didn't take pics of games 3,4 and 5 since my cam was full on day 2 and I faded away a bit from tiredness in game 3. Which sucks because those 3 games were probably better than the first 2...

The tables and terrain - Were really good, a fair few LoS blocking things and lots of area terrain, such a change from my usual city fight building games :P

My opponents - All great chaps, especially Julian who was hungover and sick and still came in and was back to drinking at 10.30am :D and Rohnin who went out drinking on Saturday night and turned up to give me a rough game on Sunday! Dominic was a great guy too with a fluffy bone legion CSM army, Tim was a cool guy with his immovable defend Dire Avengers on my main objective for 2-3 turns :P and also Mitch was a cool guy with a cool dad too, thanks for the smokes and NRL chat :D

Now, unfortunately, as with any tourney there are always some issues :(

The League Food - was not good. It sucks that there weren't many other places to eat either :(

The Sub armies - of which there were none :( My opponent was actually Jason C, who unfortunately didn't show up till later in the day and I played Julian from High Lords about 1 hour later than everyone else so we essentially missed lunch too...

The prizes - I thought they would spread the prizes more, I think I read that a few guys who should've received 2nd and 3rd best painted didn't get the recognition or the prizes on the Sunday which irks me a bit. And the winner of Lords received multiple prizes from memory which I didn't think they were going to do because in the Players Pack I read they would try to spread the prizes which didn't happen :(

The HLoT declines to go into the LoT Open - Not sure what happened here, some High Lords players apparently declined to go to High Lords and went into Lords Open instead. Why is this? Did they want to play against Open players who they hadn't played before and there was more opportunity to get a MU against a fresh opponent? Did they want an easier run and easier games to poll better? I'm not seeing the logic here of going to the same venue on both days, right in the midst of High Lords games but playing in the lesser Open tourney against players who by all accounts aren't as skilled or haven't had the experience in tourney play. Anyone help me out here? I'm quite stumped that this was allowed to happen and that that the HL players would intentionally decline the invite and play in Open. Hilly (kudos to him for donating his prizes and trophies, what a champ!), won Open and said in his speech that he had declined the invite but didn't mention specifically why...

Byes - I guess are more often than not going to occur. The sub armies should have been there to fill the gaps but unfortunately that was not so. Mark wrote on wargamer that the 5 guys that had byes all got some resin bases and also got a draw result (plus a few points I think). I could have taken the bye but felt bad if I had. Jules from High Lords rocked up at about 10.30am and we decided I should actually play Jules since I came to the tourney to play some games. In the end, I got 19 points in that game since I took the option to play for the result, I think they gave me the full 20 here since I missed lunch :( Jules was a great guy and it was a closer game than the score suggests and it was a good game. Hope he felt less hungover on Sunday than he did on Sat :D

Time Limit - was a bit of an issue in 2 games, we had to finish on turn 5 and 6 respectively. I think that my game against Rhonin had especially ran out of time even though we played at a good pace and didn't think that we had to finish on T5 :( Perhaps an extra 30 minutes at the beginning and end of the days would have been beneficial to finishing up a few of the games...

Comp - Well I theoretically had no issue with comp until now. Really, it comes down to bias and the panels likes, dislikes, etc. Its strange how an army with Kharn, Slaanesh Lord on DSteed with DWeapon, 2 x 9 Bezerkers in Rhinos with Pfist Champs, 3 x 5 Slaaneshi Marked CSM with PW Champs (no rhinos or special wpns) and 2 x 2 Oblits would receive a 2.6 out of 5. This was Doms army in round 2. It was fluffy, a bone legion of guys who had banded together under Kharn and was painted cohesively and looked cool. Why the 2.6/5 comp bat to the face? Was this a powerful build? It was definitely on the fluffier side.

I had no issues with comp until experiencing it in this tourney. I'm not particularly talking about my score, I can see how the panel could have seen a docking of points for lots of Rhinos and PMs, and the Oblits and Prince. But its a Nurgle army. Am I constrained to 6 x 7 PM walking units, Typhus and a 7 man unit of termis? I bet that army, while fluffy as hell, would get something between 2.1 and 2.6. And why? Because the panel is bias against CSM armies, amonst others. Exhibit A Look at the CSM armies and the comp scores. I see a lot of low 2s and only 1 3+ Look at the Dark Eldar armies and the comp scores. Look at Ork armies and comp scores.

Wtf is going on here? It would appear that panel comp only dilutes the playing field, making moderate armies who slip through the cracks get higher comp scores and poll better, whereas the CSM and other balanced builds are seen as the opposite and get the shaft overall in comp terms. I'm surprised the Orks got it so low too. The solution is to not have comp or to not have a panel. Or possibly to make comp 5% of overall score or something. I think its more of an issue with panel comp than with LoT in particular...

So thats really my summary of LoT, definitely was a great tourney and some cool people, games and armies. The gripes are only really a minuscule part of the big overall success of LoT :D It just so happens that Kyle got a bye, the guy next to me in round 4 got a bye and I had to wait an hour and a half before my first game and had the chance to take the bye. The sub armies pissed me off too, I guess shit happens :)

What say you all?